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New Mars Landed Missions: Upgrading the Information Relay Infrastructure

Upgrading the existing European Relay Coordination Office (ERCO) system to ERCO Data System (ERCO-DS) to provide a set of new and improved functionalities for exchanging planning information between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA JPL for data relaying of Mars Landed Assets (rovers and landers) via the respective Mars relay orbiters (orbiting space probes).

Background

Landed assets on the Martian surface require data exchange with their respective control centres and this data exchange is generally based on exchanges of files for both the controlling of the landed assets and the return of the scientific data. In the majority of the cases, the radio communication between the landed assets and the respective control centre is not direct but is done using an intermediary orbiting spacecraft. The orbiting spacecraft provides a data relay service to the Lander Control Centre (LCC) allowing the data exchange between the two end points. The European Relay Coordination Office (ERCO) system has been developed to coordinate the relay services required by the ESA landed assets and the relay services offered by the ESA orbiters. At the same time, it provides the unique interface for coordinating the requests of relay session between the ESA Mars orbiters and NASA landed assets.

Customer's Challenge

The European Relay Coordination Office (ERCO) system is responsible for coordinating data relay between Mars-bound spacecraft and ground stations on Earth for ESA. The legacy ERCO system was developed to support the first ESA ExoMars mission, TGO (Trace Gas Orbit), and the ESA lander Schiapparelli to enable ESA to interface with NASA’s equivalent system MarOS. These systems allow the two agencies to exchange planning information and support the relay of data from the two agencies’ Mars landed assets via the respective relay satellite orbiters.

The evolution of the first ERCO version into the next generation ERCO-DS aimed to develop a more flexible system able to easily support new data relay requirements for future missions on the Mars surface. 

Our Approach

Telespazio has fully developed the ERCO-DS system for ESA/ESOC as an evolution of the legacy ERCO system. This entails the development of the MCS (Mission Control System), the Simulator, the Mission Planning System, and the ERCO system for the ExoMars TGO mission. The activities started in year 2014 and Telespazio has supported all the system validation tests and simulation campaigns, the LEOP, the commissioning activities, and is currently providing the maintenance and operational support during the nominal operations.

Our Solutions

The ERCO-DS fulfils the operational requirements of the new Mars landed assets and can:

  • support MarOS, NASA’s data system.
  • transfer files required for the planning and execution of relays sessions.
  • convert files between different ERCO and MaROS supported formats.
  • track the progress of the support of each relay session.
  • produce performance reports related to the relay session.

One of the most important aspects of ERCO evolution is the introduction of the overflight and relay session concepts in its design. Whilst the ERCO is purely based on transfer of specific files (relay request and response files) and tracking their statuses, the new system takes a step further, in order to tackle the Relay Office operational aspects, by the whole new abstraction layer on top of what’s beneath – the file transfer of requests and responses. These new concepts are the base to ERCO functionality and each and every operation will be conducted on overflights and relay sessions. The ERCO-DS also provides the functionalities to allow the Relay Office team to combine and validate the requests originating from various entities into a consolidated plan, expanding it with additional commanding as required for operations. The ERCO Data System is responsible for planning and scheduling the relay sessions taking into account the planning facts (e.g. overflight schedules, ground station visibilities, link budget, etc.). The validation is achieved through specific routines and user configurable validation and checking mechanisms.


While the original ERCO system was tightly coupled with the Mission Control System, the new ERCO-DS is a fully standalone software that is used by the Relay Office personnel. As well as being a planning system, it is also a repositor containing all the information needed for relay session scheduling. It will keep the overflight and relay session history, provide the conflict resolution mechanisms supporting the users during the planning activities as well as the archive containing all request and response files that have been produced by or transferred via ERCO system.
The first new missions that ERCO-DS will support is ExoMars RSP.
 

Why Telespazio

Telespazio Germany has been involved in the ExoMars and ERCO missions since 2013, providing telecommunications and navigation support services. The services we have provided include, among other things, data relay from the ExoMars spacecraft to Earth, as well as providing orbit determination and developing the Mission Control Systems. Knowing that they could rely on our expertise ESA chose Telespazio for the ERCO-DS system.

Our Solution

DIDIT